This post was published 4 years 11 months 27 days ago. Therefore, it may well be out of date. Do not reply on the contents of this post being accurate. On 10th June 2006 security expert Bruce Schneier gave a talk “Counterterrorism in America: Security Theater Against Movie-Plot Threats” at the ACLU New Jersey Membership Conference.
The video is just over an hour long and it’s available via Bruce’s blog and also via Google Video (also embedded below).
I always like listening to/watching Bruce talk about security (check out my previous post about his talk at IT Conversations).
In this talk he focuses primarily on post-911 airport security but, as always, Bruce’s topics are applicable in other areas.
Some areas of the talk I found interesting:
There’s no such thing as absolute security: security always involves trade-offs. Often convenience is a trade-off but it is not necessary to trade privacy to increase security.
Agenda is important when assessing security. Depending on who you are (a government, the police, a corporation, or a security consumer (you and me)) will depend on which security measures you feel are most appropriate.
Data-mining works for credit-card fraud but not for finding terrorists.
No fly lists: a list of people who are so dangerous that we can’t allow them to fly for any resaon but are so innocent we can’t arrest them.
And I found the following particularly thought provoking:
Information is the pollution problem of the new century. All processors produce it; it stays around. How we use it and how we dispose of it is central to the Information age, just as those questions about pollution were to central to the Industrial age.